Case Study 16-01: Alex's Presentation in 45 Minutes

Gemini + Slides for a 20-Slide Client Presentation from Scratch

Persona: Alex Chen, Marketing Director at a premium home goods e-commerce brand. Her team manages brand, content, paid acquisition, email, and social. Works primarily in Google Workspace.

The Situation: It is a Thursday afternoon. Alex's VP of Sales calls: a major retail partner has agreed to a "surprise" meeting Friday at 2 PM — 22 hours from now. The meeting is an opportunity to pitch a new co-marketing initiative Alex's team has been developing conceptually but has not yet formally presented. The retail partner's CMO will be in the room.

Alex needs to build a presentation from scratch. She has a clear story in her head; it does not yet exist in slides. Her Creative Director is available for an hour Thursday evening. Alex has 45 minutes right now before her next obligation.

This is the kind of high-pressure situation where the 45 minutes she has right now determines the quality of the final presentation.

The Pre-Work: Defining the Story (10 minutes)

Before opening Slides, Alex spends 10 minutes writing a clear brief:

The Initiative: "Shared Seasons" — a co-marketing program where Alex's brand and the retail partner align seasonal campaign launches, co-create content that serves both audiences, share customer data (within compliance), and coordinate promotional timing to reduce competitive cannibalization.

The Audience: The retail partner's CMO (marketing-oriented, focused on customer experience), their Head of Partnerships (commercial-oriented, focused on terms and ROI), and potentially a digital marketing lead.

The Key Points: 1. Why this moment: home goods is showing category-level softness, co-marketing creates incremental reach neither can achieve alone 2. The model: what exactly we are proposing (content co-creation, coordinated seasonal releases, data sharing framework) 3. Why us: what Alex's brand brings that makes this valuable for the partner (audience demographics, content quality, brand positioning in key customer segments) 4. What success looks like: how they would measure it, what the first 90 days would look like 5. The ask: commitment to a pilot program structure and timeline

The Format: 20 slides max, brand-forward, clean visual design, heavy on visuals and light on text. Professional but not stuffy.

The Gemini Session: Building the Structure (15 minutes)

Alex opens Google Slides and uses Gemini to generate an initial presentation structure.

Her first prompt to Gemini in Slides:

Create a 20-slide presentation for a co-marketing initiative pitch. The audience
is the CMO and Head of Partnerships of a major retail partner. The presenter is
the Marketing Director of a premium home goods e-commerce brand.

The presentation is called "Shared Seasons" and proposes a co-marketing
partnership including: coordinated seasonal campaign launches, co-created
content for both audiences, and a data-sharing framework for audience insights.

The five key story beats are:
1. The opportunity: home goods market is soft; co-marketing creates reach neither
   partner can achieve alone
2. The model: what "Shared Seasons" specifically involves
3. Why our brand: what we bring to the partner (audience quality, content excellence,
   brand positioning in key demographics)
4. What success looks like: metrics and 90-day pilot structure
5. The ask: moving to a pilot program

Slide style: executive. Light on text, clear headlines, each slide makes one point.
No slide should have more than 4 bullet points. Include a title slide, agenda slide,
and a closing slide with proposed next steps.

Gemini generated a 20-slide deck with: - Title slide: "Shared Seasons: A Co-Marketing Partnership for Amplified Reach" - Agenda slide - Four context slides (market overview, consumer trends, the partnership opportunity) - One slide introducing the Shared Seasons concept - Four model detail slides (one each for: content co-creation, seasonal coordination, data sharing framework, brand positioning together) - Three "why us" slides - Three success measurement slides (KPIs, 90-day structure, ROI model) - Two closing slides (ask + next steps) - One thank you / Q&A slide

Alex's evaluation of the generated structure: 15 of 20 slides were structurally right. She needed to: - Collapse the four context slides into two (they were redundant) - Add a slide showing the visual identity of the program (a placeholder for what the co-branded creative might look like) - Remove one "why us" slide that was too self-promotional for this audience - Reorder two slides to improve narrative flow

Time for this phase: 15 minutes including Gemini generation, review, and annotation of changes.

The Content Phase: Editing for Accuracy and Voice (20 minutes)

Alex worked through the slide content using the Gemini side panel for specific tasks while manually editing the parts that required her organizational knowledge and judgment.

What Gemini Helped With

Market statistics placeholder: The generated deck included placeholder language like "[insert home goods market growth stat]." Alex asked Gemini in the side panel: "What is the current growth trend in the home goods e-commerce market? I need a data point for a 2024 presentation." Gemini returned two web-sourced statistics she could evaluate — she selected one and noted it would need verification before the meeting.

The "why us" rewrite: One slide had language that was too close to a sales pitch. Alex asked Gemini: "Rewrite this slide to be more partner-oriented — instead of why we're great, focus on what the partner gets. Audience is a CMO who evaluates everything through 'what does this do for my brand.'" The rewrite shifted the framing effectively in one pass.

The 90-day pilot structure: Alex had a concept but not a written structure. She described the concept to Gemini in three sentences; Gemini expanded it into a properly structured pilot timeline with phase names, milestones, and decision gates. She edited for specific timing and added one milestone Gemini had missed.

Speaker notes for two slides: For the two most complex slides (the data sharing framework and the ROI model), Alex asked Gemini to generate speaker notes based on the slide content and the audience context. The speaker notes were approximately 70% usable; she edited for specific numbers and competitive context she knew but had not put in the prompt.

What Alex Did Herself

Competitive context: Two slides referenced the competitive landscape. Alex wrote this section herself — the specific framing of how their brand positioned against the retailer's other home goods partners was strategic judgment no AI could supply.

The "first 90 days" ask: The specific ask — a three-month pilot at four seasonal moments, with specific data-sharing terms — involved negotiating nuance that Alex knew from prior conversations with the partner. This was not in any document and required her drafting.

Tone throughout: Alex read every slide and adjusted language toward her voice and the specific tone she wanted for this relationship. Gemini's default professional language was adequate; her edits made it authentic.

The Handoff to the Creative Director (evening session, 60 minutes)

Alex sent her Creative Director the completed 20-slide content draft via Slides at 5:30 PM with a brief: "Story is locked, content is solid. Need design polish and one visual for slide 8 (program identity concept). CMO-level audience, brand-forward, clean. Meeting at 2 PM tomorrow."

Her Creative Director spent 60 minutes: - Applying their brand visual system consistently - Replacing the standard Slides template with their brand template - Generating a program identity concept image for slide 8 using a combination of their existing brand assets and light AI-generated element - Adjusting font sizing and text placement for readability - Adding two high-quality product photography images to replace generic placeholders on two slides

The final deck: 20 slides, visually polished, on-brand, narratively clear.

The Timeline in Detail

Alex's working time: 45 minutes Creative Director's time: 60 minutes Elapsed time from call to finished deck: approximately 5 hours

Previous comparable situation (without AI assistance): Alex's last comparable rush presentation took 3 hours of her time plus 2 hours of Creative Director time, spread over two days because structure needed to be established before design could begin. The AI-accelerated version was not faster in total elapsed time (the Creative Director's availability determined that) — but it was completed in 45 minutes of Alex's time rather than 3 hours.

The Meeting

The presentation performed well. The retail partner's CMO found the "Shared Seasons" concept compelling and the presentation clear. Two slides prompted the most substantive discussion: the data sharing framework (where Alex had the most specific knowledge and the Gemini-generated content was most heavily edited) and the 90-day pilot structure.

The meeting ended with an agreement to reconvene in two weeks to discuss specific data sharing terms. Alex's ask was received positively.

A Realistic Assessment of the Workflow

What Worked Well

Speed to first draft: Getting to a structurally complete 20-slide deck in 15 minutes instead of 45-60 minutes is genuinely valuable. The structural work — what belongs in the presentation, in what order, at what level of detail — is not creative work once the story is clear. Gemini handles the translation from story to structure well.

Parallelism with Creative: Because the content draft was ready early, the Creative Director could start their work the same day rather than waiting for Alex's content the next morning. The AI-accelerated content phase enabled creative parallel processing that would not have been possible otherwise.

Specific editing tasks: The "reframe for the partner's perspective" rewrite, the 90-day pilot expansion, and the speaker notes generation were all well-suited to Gemini assistance. Each was a task with a clear structure but variable content — exactly where AI adds value.

What Required Alex's Judgment

The story: Gemini executed the story; it did not create it. The "Shared Seasons" concept, the five story beats, the specific pitch to this specific partner — all of this came from Alex's 10-minute pre-work brief. A vague brief would have produced a generic presentation. A strong brief produced a focused one.

Competitive and strategic context: Two slides required Alex's specific knowledge of the competitive landscape and the partner relationship. No AI could supply this.

The voice edit: Reading every slide and adjusting language toward her authentic professional voice took 10-15 minutes distributed through the content phase. This is not optional for presentations at the CMO level — generic language is detectable and undermines credibility.

Verification of statistics: The market statistics Gemini suggested were starting points that required independent verification before the presentation. Alex verified them Thursday evening; one needed adjustment.

The Honest Assessment

The Gemini-assisted workflow produced a presentation in 45 minutes of Alex's time. An all-human workflow would have taken 2-3 hours for similar quality. The quality difference between the AI-assisted and all-human version was small — Alex's editing ensured the output reflected her voice and organizational knowledge. The time difference was significant — a compressed timeline that would have been stressful became manageable.

The essential principle: AI handles the structural translation; humans handle the strategic content and voice. Alex's 10-minute brief was more valuable than the 15 minutes Gemini spent generating slides. The time investment that mattered was the pre-work clarity — knowing the story before asking the tool to build it.

Replicable Principles

Write a clear brief before generating anything. The quality of Gemini's generated structure is proportional to the quality of the brief. A one-sentence brief produces a generic deck; a detailed five-point story with audience specifics and format constraints produces a focused one.

Generate structure first, content second. Use Gemini for structure generation and selective content drafting. Avoid having it write everything — the sections requiring organizational knowledge or strategic nuance need your authorship.

Use the Gemini side panel for specific targeted rewrites, not for general editing. "Rewrite this for [specific audience constraint]" and "expand this concept into a structured timeline" are well-suited tasks. "Edit my presentation" is not.

Plan for a design phase. AI-generated Slides content will not be visually compelling without design work. Build the design phase into your timeline and creative brief rather than treating it as optional polish.

The pre-work brief is the most important investment. Alex's 10 minutes of story clarity before touching Gemini determined the quality of everything that followed. AI tools execute against clarity; they do not create it.